


Best Father-in-law Award

by gnimaerd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nyssa and Sara go on the run from the League and kind of get married; Quentin Lance gains the strength to accept the things he cannot change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Father-in-law Award

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime between S2-3. In light of the S3 premiere, I decided to finish this and get it posted today. I figure we deserve something sweet and fluffy.

 

 

“Um, so the short version,” Sara tells her dad, whilst she's bleeding all over his kitchen table, “is that we've eloped.”

 

“Elo – what?” Quentin is pretty sure that he heard that wrong. He absolutely must have heard that wrong.

 

(Please god let him have heard that wrong).

 

“You've got a daughter-in-law,” Sara is shivering uncontrollably and her face is going grey but she still manages to smile, wide and warm, prodding his leg. “Congrats.”

 

Nyssa has the grace to look as close to sheepish as Quentin suspects she ever manages to look.

 

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he mutters, but they all have bigger problems – because Sara is bleeding to death.

 

“You promised me you'd protect her,” he tells Nyssa, instead of even attempting to broach the whole 'elopement', 'daughter-in-law' bullshit he is absolutely not contemplating right now. “You _promised_ me.”

 

“I tried,” Nyssa retorts, her jaw tight, “she pushed me out of the way.”

 

“He'd have got you in the chest,” Sara shakes her head, “you'd have died instantly. He gets me in the side, all I need is – is – stitches and – maybe a blood transfusion – and we're good – I'm good – I'll be f-fine – ”

 

She is absolutely not going to be fine, not unless somebody does something immediately, and Quentin can feel his whole world shrinking down to one concentrated pin-point of _fuck my kid is dying fuck fuck fuck –_ this isn't helping, he can't help her if he panics – 

 

“She needs a blood transfusion, right now,” Oliver is, for once, proving himself useful, “Diggle – ”

 

“On it,” his driver is already out the front door – before Quentin can ask where the hell he thinks he's going.

 

“Who has O-negative?” Oliver is glancing round the table, “Felicity can you get into some hospital files or – ”

 

“I do,” Quentin abruptly remembers, even as Felicity is pulling out her tablet, “I've got O-negative – she can have mine – ”

 

“Got it,” Diggle is already back, with a black briefcase and a grim expression.

 

Why and for how long Oliver Queen has been keeping an emergency blood transfusion kit in his car, Quentin doesn't know – doesn't want to know.

 

Right now he's just grateful.

 

“Dad, I'm not gonna – ” Sara's shaking her head on the table.

 

“Yes, yes you are,” Quentin snaps, at exactly the same moment as Nyssa is barking something at her in a language he can't identify – sounds like she was expressing kind of a similar sentiment, though, from the look on Sara's face (she starts giggling, high pitched and hysterical).

 

Nyssa's expression remains sharp with fear. The hand she is using to clench Sara's with is oil-slick with blood.

 

“How do we – ” Quentin tears the button on his cuff trying to get his shirt sleeve rolled up – Felicity helps him, her hands quick – she's done this before, he realises, watching her expression.

 

“Sit down,” she advises, “when was the last time you ate?”

 

“Shouldn't someone be stitching her up?” Quentin ignores the question, looks at the bloody rent low in Sara's belly, the deep purple stain in her t-shirt spread almost up to her chest.

 

“Sit down, Officer Lance,” Felicity gives him a little shove, stronger than she looks (or maybe he's just gone weak in the knees, the smell of the blood is getting overpowering). He collapses into the nearest kitchen chair. She brings him a cookie.

 

He doesn't really feel the needle go in, just a quick, dull sting. He's trying to meet Sara's gaze – her pupils are blown, her eyes roving the ceiling, dangerously unfocused.

 

“ _Habibti_ ,” Nyssa has grasped Sara's chin, leant over her so that a fall of thick dark hair momentarily obscures her face from view, “ _l_ _a ttrokny – habibti –_ ”

 

“She's not going anywhere,” Diggle pushes past her, carrying what Quentin realises must be a suturing kit, “come on, Sara, focus – ”

 

Oliver is cutting off Sara's shirt. “She awake?”

 

“M'kay,” Sara mutters.

 

Quentin grasps the hand closest to him, the one Nyssa isn't currently crushing to death. “Come on, kiddo, keep your eyes open for us, yeah?”

 

(She's wearing a ring. A plain, thin gold band twisted into in a symmetrical pattern of angles across the top; looks celtic, or buddhist, or something. Quentin finds himself absently rubbing it with his thumb).

 

Felicity has slid a second needle into Sara's arm. Diggle is cleaning up her wound. Quentin can't tell which is making Sara twitch.

 

“Damnit, I can't see where the blood's coming from,” Diggle is mopping at Sara with his shirt sleeve and getting nowhere, “someone get me a cloth – and a spray bottle – ”

 

“Just get her closed up!” Quentin tightens his knuckles on Sara's, “for god's sake she can't lose much more – ”

 

“Something major inside her's been nicked,” Olive gives him a sharp look, “if we don't find it and clamp it, she'll just bleed out into her abdomen rather than onto the floor. Felicity!”

 

“Yes – yes, I'm coming,” Felicity tosses him the cloth she's been running under the tap, begins filling a plastic bottle.

 

Oliver leans over Diggle with the cloth, wiping down the skin whilst Diggle shines a flashlight , peering into the deep stab wound. (Amongst all the other various things Quentin is definitely not thinking about right now, one of them is how Oliver Queen would know anything about internal injuries).

 

“Ah – yeah, there it is,” he nods, “okay, Sara, this is gonna hurt – ”

 

If Sara hears that, she doesn't respond. Her gaze is on the ceiling again, this time looking faintly confused. She doesn't react when Diggle pushes his fingers into the wound and Quentin barely has time to look away before he starts gagging – he's seen worse in the field but that wasn't Sara, that wasn't his baby being pulled open so she can be stitched up –

 

Felicity hands him a bowl so he can be sick, then a glass of water. Distantly, he appreciates her efficiency.

 

Nyssa has gone stone-still on the other side of the table, her gaze resolutely on Sara's face rather than her wound.

 

Sara comes back to full consciousness whilst Oliver is mopping blood off the floor (literally – of all the things Quentin thought he'd see in his life, Oliver Queen wielding an actual mop, using an actual bucket, was never one of them). His youngest daughter mumbles something unintelligible, makes an ugly face and blinks from Quentin to Nyssa and back.

 

“Which one of you is holding my hand? Cause it hurts. You should let go.”

 

They both let go of her hands.

 

“You want a pillow?” Felicity leans over her, still unnervingly efficient.

 

Pillow acquired, a blanket thrown over her, she looks a little better, Quentin thinks. Less grey. If it weren't for the tube still running his blood into her arm, he could almost pretend she's less critically wounded than she is.

 

“Honey, don't hate me for saying this,” he draws his chair up closer to her head, moving carefully so as not to jog the needle in his arm or hers, “but next time, could you just let the bad guy stab your girlfriend here?”

 

Sara rolls her eyes. “No, dad. And also – she's my wife.”

 

“Yeah,” Quentin swallows, letting the full reality of this idea settle – failing, really, to fully digest the enormity of it. “That's gonna be an interesting one to break to your mom.”

 

“We already did,” Sara tells him, “we just got out of Central City, actually.”

 

“How'd she take it?”

 

“Well, all things considered,” Nyssa remarks, easily.

 

Sara manages a grim smile. “Yeah, she only like – threw a glass at your head. I was worried she might shoot you.”

 

“Sounds about right.” Quentin runs a hand over his face.

 

Felicity makes him eat another cookie, since he puked up the last one. And when Sara is looking roughly a normal human colour again they stop the blood transfusion and Felicity gives them both bandaids from her purse. They are pink and have cupcakes on them. Quentin contemplates his for a moment, as Nyssa gathers Sara up off the table and carries her through into the lounge.

 

He shouldn't be surprised that she can do that – she did show up on his doorstep with Sara practically slung over her shoulder – but it still takes him a moment, the brisk physicality of this woman. He's seen her kill three guys with something not much bigger than a table knife but that was in her... assassin-y uniform thing. In jeans and a hoodie, with her hair messed up and a graze on her cheek she looks like anyone else. In fact, with that tired, frightened, washed-out look behind her eyes she could be someone he'd see down at the precinct: a mugging victim, the parent of a missing kid. Just another human being have a spectacularly shitty day. She's got freckles, for god's sake – you don't expect internationally infamous assassins to have freckles.

 

It's unnervingly easy to forget that he once saw her holding his wife (ex-wife, he corrects himself) at the business end of an arrow.

 

Sara refuses anything for the pain, spread out on the sofa with her upper body resting against Nyssa's chest.

 

“You need a hospital,” Quentin points out, not for the first time.

 

“They'll find us,” Sara shakes her head.

 

“And they won't find you here?” Oliver stands over them with his arms crossed, looking about as pleased with this situation as Quentin feels.

 

“My father's men will not approach us anywhere where there may be collateral damage,” Nyssa replies, “he knows that to get to either of us in your company, he will have to go through you, and he has no wish to do that – to draw too much attention to the situation by killing multiple civilians... his own heir abandoning the League is not something he will want the rest of the organisation to find out about. I'm an embarrassment to him. For the moment, that's working to our advantage.”

 

“So what – you just planning to camp out on my couch for the rest of your lives?” Quentin raises his eyebrows, “cause I'm thinking about implementing this rule where no one who has ever kidnapped my wife gets to sleep under my roof.”

 

“She's your ex-wife, dad.”

 

“Don't get smart.”

 

“I took your wife to save Sara's life,” Nyssa's tone carries only the edge of her temper in it, but Quentin gets the distinct impression that he wouldn't want to induce any more than that. “I had been ordered to kill her if she didn't return with me. When she refused to come home I tried another way. Or would you rather I had done as my father asked me?”

 

“I'd rather you would have just left all of us the hell alone,” Quentin narrows his eyes at her.

 

“Dad,” Sara's tone is sharp – her fingers laced tightly through Nyssa's. “Please. You don't know what we've been through.”

 

No, but he's just gotten a pretty graphic look at the end result and really he should know to just shut the hell up, given that he's still feeling sick and watching Sara nearly die has not been good for his overall sense of equilibrium tonight.

 

He huffs, squaring his shoulders – as close to apologising as he's going to get in the immediate future – and squeezes Sara's knee.

 

“We just need a couple of days and then we can find a way to disappear, I promise,” Sara says, “please, dad.”

 

“Yeah,” he nods, “okay. Of course. Does your sister know you're here?”

 

Sara shakes her head. “Someone should check on her – the League...”

 

“I'll go,” Oliver volunteers, “you should both get some sleep.”

 

No one's getting any sleep, of course. Nyssa's got that dead-eyed shark look about her that radiates 'just keep swimming until you can tear something in two' and Sara's in pain, spending the night twitching and shifting uncomfortably, too hot, too cold, sticky with her own blood and sweat.

 

Quentin resists the urge to sit outside his front door with a shotgun and goes upstairs, calls his sponsor.

 

“My youngest's back in town. Yeah, with a wife. She got married. Didn't even call me. Not even a note. Nothing.”

 

***

 

He startles awake at 6:30 – it's just getting light and he can hear someone moving in the kitchen. He finds the pistol he keeps in the drawer by his bed, and creeps downstairs to discover Nyssa, boiling something mysterious on the stove.

 

“The herbs will aid the healing process,” she says, without glancing round at Quentin, “put the weapon down, officer Lance.”

 

Quentin lowers his gun, passing a hand over his face – the joint of his elbow pinches; Felicity's cupcake bandaid remains firmly in place. “How's she doing?”

 

“She's foul tempered because she's gone two days on only an hour or so of sleep,” Nyssa replies, “but otherwise she's as well as can be expected.”  
  


“What about you? Sleep wise, I mean?”

 

At that, Nyssa glances round, quizzically, as if she's shocked he's asking at all. (To be fair to her, he's a little shocked himself).

 

“You can't protect her if you're out of your mind from exhaustion,” he points out, firmly, “and whatever I think – you're a pretty deadly woman. You're probably the best chance she has of surviving whatever – this – is that you've got her into this time so. Take my bed, get some rest. Okay? I'll keep watch.”

 

Nyssa looks as if she might argue, but then doesn't say anything, only delivers one of her curt little nods, and takes the pan off the stove.

 

“She must drink all of this,” she tells him, pouring the greyish, sweet-smelling mixture into a coffee mug, “it will prevent an infection, promote blood flow to the wound and ease her pain. If she cannot be in a hospital, this will do as much as anything she'd be given there.”

 

Quentin glances at the mug, doubtfully, but doesn't argue as she hands it to him.

 

***

  
Sara is downing Nyssa's concoction when Laurel arrives, looking fresh and clean and only slightly frayed with worry. Quentin has never understood how his eldest can so easily sail through a crisis without a hair out of place, but he's also at least a little aware that the time she takes to put on makeup and pick out clothes are as much a coping mechanism as her drinking used to be.

 

“Sara.” Laurel envelopes her with a sigh, and for a moment Sara presses her face to her sister's hair and clings to her in a way Quentin cannot remember her ever doing before. Laurel pulls back enough to cup her face, pushing her hair out of her eyes (the gesture is faintly familiar and it takes Quentin a moment to realise that it's Dinah's). “What happened?”

 

“Nyssa and her dad are working through some issues,” Sara shrugs, stiffly. “They kinda make us Lances look like the Braidy Bunch, huh?”

 

Laurel sighs. “Sara.”

 

“We eloped,” Sara begins again, after a moment, and then ploughs on through Laurel's incredulous expression. “I told her I couldn't stay with the League. And I wanted her to come with me. So she came with me. Just like that. She picked me. Over her whole entire life, she chose me instead.”

 

Her smile is small and tremulous but real, all of a sudden, and Quentin thinks _fuck_ because Sara looks utterly, radiantly happy.

 

Even through the dark circles under her eyes, the bruises, the slightly unnatural skin colour – she looks like a kid at Christmas, like she did when she was five years old and he got her stupid, ridiculously expensive Barbie doll she wanted with the special light up unicorn accessory (he'd had to pay for two in the end because Laurel had sulked about it). Sara looks so damn happy he could cry for her.

 

His kid has married the woman she loves and he's gonna have to shut up and deal with it because this is clearly pretty much everything she wants right now. Stab wounds and all.

 

Laurel runs a hand through her hair, wheels turning over exactly the way her mom's do when she's choosing her words. “So you married her. Nyssa. The woman who took mom hostage. And poisoned me.”

 

“And came back here and saved Starling city from Slade Wilson's army.”

 

Laurel makes a visible effort to breathe evenly. Sara anxiously scans her face for a moment, then takes her hand.

 

“All the stuff she did – before? That was her dad. You've never met him, Laurel, you don't know what he's like. Leaving the League is punishable by death, but he didn't just have me killed – he sent Nyssa to do it. To punish her for bringing me into the League to begin with. He knew how she felt about me and he did that to her. Do you get that? She's trying to get away from him – from that. We both are.”

 

Laurel's silence tightens, as she chews her lip – and then sighs. “So what, no invite? No hideous bride's maid's dress?”

 

Sara laughs, flopping back against the sofa with a small, relieved smile. “We were kind of in a hurry.”  
  


“Uh-hu.”

 

“Small ceremony. Very exclusive. And probably you'd have had trouble hiking half way up a Tibetan mountain range in a bride's maid's dress to find us.”

 

“A tibetan mountain range? Seriously?”

 

“In a cave.”

 

“Who the hell married you? The yeti?”

 

Sara snorts. “A monk, you jerk, who do you think?”

 

“So monks are down with the lesbian thing?” Laurel kicks off her heels, slumps on the sofa and props her bare feet on Quentin's coffee table in exactly the way he's been telling her not to do since she was five years old.

 

“I'm bi,” Sara prods her, “but yeah. I mean. This one was.”  
  


“So is it legal?” Laurel quirks an eyebrow. “I mean, officially? Is there paperwork? Do you have a certificate?”

 

“It was a monk in a cave, not the town hall.”

 

“Sara,” Laurel folds her arms, suddenly very much the lawyer. “You need paperwork.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because that's what marriage is! It's a legally binding contract!”

 

“Oh, gee, that's romantic.”

 

“ _Sara_ ,” Laurel narrows her eyes, “you can marry who you like but – ”

 

“Well, actually, no I can't,” Sara points out, blithely, “not in this state.”

 

Laurel closes her mouth momentarily as it suddenly occurs to both her and Quentin simultaneously that this is true.

 

Quentin fights the urge to laugh. His daughter is married to an internationally wanted criminal, someone who has probably murdered more people than she has fingers, and the grounds on which the American legal system is objecting is that they're both women.

 

Laurel has pulled out her phone.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Googling.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“We need to find the nearest place where you can get legal.”

 

“I don't care about that shit, Laurel,” Sara rolls her eyes, “the point isn't – legal. The point is _I love her_. We are married.”

 

“Sara,” Laurel puts a hand on Sara's ankle and talks in that cool, calm, _she who must be obeyed_ sort of tone that her mother used to use to make her get up and go to school in the mornings, “if you want to marry this woman – ”

 

“We're already married!”

 

“– you need legal recognition and everything that that brings. Medical benefits, housing benefits, _dental plans_ – ”

 

“Yeah, because Nyssa and me were totally thinking about sorting out our 401k.”

 

Laurel looks unamused. “I'm sorry, were you planning on heading back to Nanda Parbat? Because if you're looking to set up a life for yourselves anywhere that isn't a secret city populated by a league of master criminals, I'm gonna suggest that you at least attempt to do something sensible. You need next of kin status to each other, for a start, especially if you plan on – getting stabbed regularly.”

 

“I'm gonna suggest that you not plan on that,” Quentin interrupts, fixing them both with a stern look.

 

“You realise I nearly died last night, right?” Sara's tone is deadpan as she watches her sister's intent expression, “I'm really not up for some spontaneous wedding road trip. I just had one of those. I'm kinda glad it's over now.”  
  


Laurel holds up her phone. “How about Vermont? It's legal in Vermont.”  
  


Sara groans and closes her eyes, looking pained.

 

“What's legal?” That Nyssa has crept downstairs and into the room unheard shouldn't surprise Quentin, all things considered, but he still has to pretend to have a coughing fit to avoid making it obvious that he has just jumped out of his skin.

 

“Our marriage, apparently,” Sara yawns, “or it will be, in Vermont.”

 

Nyssa quirks an eyebrow. “Our marriage already conforms to all the laws that we need it to.”

 

“Yeah but apparently we need – like – a dental plan.”

 

“You need legal recognition under United States law,” Laurel says, coolly, “it's important.”

 

“My sister really wants to be a bride's maid,” Sara adds, holding out a hand to Nyssa to pull her close.

 

Nyssa allows herself to be drawn in like the tide, slipping into Sara's personal space as if she'd never left it, as Sara slides an arm around her waist – the assassin begins smoothing Sara's hair in a kind of automatic, reflexive way.

 

“I don't generally concern myself with United States law,” she remarks, surprising precisely no one. “And you realise that if I were to use any kind of valid identification I would immediately be arrested?”

 

“And?”

 

“Surely a legal ceremony made with an illegal identification is not legal at all,” Nyssa asks, still stroking Sara's hair. The quiet challenge in her logical tone seems deliberately pitched to raise Laurel's hackles and it does just that – Sara watches her sister all but bristle.

 

“Whichever ID you use – if you had taken Sara to the hospital last night, you wouldn't have been allowed in to see her,” her tone has grown dangerously thin, “because you are not legally married to her. Do you want to be in that situation? Seriously?”

 

“I'd have saved her life with or without a hospital.”

 

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Quentin tries not to say it, he really does – but it's too early in the morning for him to practice real self-restraint right that moment. “If Oliver and – and – Felicity and – John hadn't been here last night, Sara would have bled out in my kitchen, and you know it.”

 

Nyssa narrows her eyes at him, her grip on Sara tightening.

 

“What's the harm in doing this right?” Laurel interjects, a little more gently, right at the moment when the pause gets unbearable. “I mean. Just. Do you guys want a future here?”

 

“Dog, kids, picket fence,” Sara rolls her eyes, “that sound like us to you, Laurel?”

 

“Apartment, jobs, _health insurance_ ,” Laurel retorts, pointedly.

 

Sara glances up at Nyssa for a moment, and then abruptly says something to her in a language that Quentin can't identify – Arabic, maybe? Nyssa replies, softly, and Quentin feels like he might as well be on a whole other fucking planet to his daughter, all of a sudden –

 

But then Nyssa is shrugging, and Sara touches a finger to her girlfriend – wife? - to Nyssa's chin, and flashes her a quick, easy smile.

 

“Fine, we'll do it,” she breaks back into English. “But no dresses, no cake, no – you know? We're not turning this into a production.”  
  


“Reckon we've had quite enough production here already,” Quentin points out, dryly.

 

“Yeah but we're inviting everyone, right?” Laurel asks, “I mean – vigilante marries assassin – we're inviting...”

 

“What, you want the Arrow to officiate?” Sara grins, glancing at her dad with something in her expression he can't read.

 

Laurel snorts.

 

***  
  
  


Why the hell Sara apparently wants Oliver at her wedding Quentin has no idea – he kinda gets Felicity, they seem to be friends – but the guy who is not only Sara's ex but Laurel's?

 

Fine, whatever, they're all grown ups, they can work out their own shit.

 

Quentin has bigger problems.

 

“I have literally nothing to wear!”

 

“Dad, I'm getting married in a t-shirt, you can come in your pyjamas, it doesn't matter,” Sara's propping herself on his bed as he shuffles through his closet. She still can't stand up straight for too long at a time so she mostly crawls from one piece of soft furnishing to another, unless she can convince Nyssa to carry her.

 

“Your mom's gonna be there.”

 

He meets the faintly entertained expression on Sara's face with a glare that dares her to question his motives.

 

“Smart casual,” Laurel has put her head round the door, “it's easy.”

 

“What does smart casual even mean?” Quentin demands, glancing from one daughter to the other, “what, I wear a bowtie and sneakers? What? _Jeez_.”

 

“It means you can wear a shirt but no tie,” Laurel intervenes, infuriatingly reasonable, “and – do you have a blazer or something?”

 

He folds his arms, wondering if he genuinely looks, to his firstborn, like the sort of guy who owns blazers.

 

Sara's giggling again.

 

“Dad, seriously, it's no big deal!”

 

“My baby is getting married, my ex-wife is going to be there and she might be bringing a date – it is absolutely a big deal.”

 

“Oh, you want to pull a Beyonce on mom,” Sara sounds uncannily like her old self, pre-island, insomuch as she also, at that stage of her life, made vague pop references that he didn't understand.

 

“ _I woke up like this_ ,” Laurel throws out a hip and poses with exaggerated flare – Sara snorts.

 

“Yeah, that's what dad wants.”

 

“What dad wants is a hair cut, and a blazer,” Laurel steps into the room far enough to ruffle his hair affectionately, “and we can fix both of those things in one afternoon. Wanna go shopping, dad?”

 

Actually this might be the singular time in his life when shopping with Laurel sounds like a good idea. If there's anyone who can get him roughly presentable looking under these circumstances, it's going to be his eldest child.

 

“Nothing fancy,” he cautions, as Laurel takes his arm and steers him out of the room, “I'm not Oliver Queen.”

 

“Dad, Oliver is not fancy.”

 

“That guy's shirts cost more than half my annual salary. Pretty fancy from where I'm standing.”

 

***  
  


They decide to go to Hawaii, because apparently it's the only place in America where there are equal marriage laws but neither Sara nor Nyssa have ever killed anyone in the locality. (The fact that it's also, you know, _Hawaii,_ is apparently just a pleasant coincidence).

 

“You killed someone in Vermont?” Laurel demands, incredulously, “who the hell in Vermont needed to die?”

 

“Child molester,” Sara intones, evenly.

 

“Two child molesters, a corrupt judge, and the leader of a rather large organised crime syndicate with a second home next to Martha's Vineyard,” Nyssa adds. “Those aren't all especially pleasant memories, I can assure you.”

 

Laurel sighs. “But you've seriously never killed anyone in Hawaii?”

 

“Apparently there's a comparatively low proportion of scumbags in the general population there.”

 

“Beach wedding!” Felicity declares, clapping her hands, “it'll be cute! We can all hang out in the sunshine and drink cocktails and eat cake – or at least, I'll devise a way to keep sand out of the cake.”

 

They don't send out invites or save the dates or anything that could in any way give anyone who shouldn't know an idea of the exact date of the ceremony. As far as Quentin can tell, Oliver and Felicity and John Diggle and that street kid who used to date (is still dating? Quentin can't keep track) Thea, all go out and personally invite anyone Sara wants to come (Nyssa has no one she wants there).

 

This is apparently the safest way to do it. Nothing written down, nothing traceable.

 

(Dinah refuses the invitation. She loves Sara. She's happy for Sara. But no. This is – not something she's ready to deal with. And Quentin suspects he can't blame her – it wasn't him who Nyssa once held hostage, after all. Still he feels the sting on Sara's behalf, sees his youngest absorb the rejection with a sigh and a shrug and really, truly wishes that her life were less complicated. Also he went and bought a blazer for nothing, for crying out loud.)

 

“We'll all get there at some point within this two week period,” Felicity is pointing at a calender, one of myriad stacks of paper – schedules, lists, cake recipes – on what used to be the Lance family dinner table, which Quentin could never bring himself to get rid of, though his kitchen is too small for it, (he might finally have to scrap it, now – Sara's blood won't come out of the grain). “Once we're there, we find someone to officiate and we find a beach, and we're good.”

 

They're all – Oliver, Diggle, Felicity, Laurel, Sara, Nyssa, Roy – gathered in Quentin's kitchen – Sara not being strong enough to leave yet means that his place has become the unofficial base of operations for this whole wedding situation, which Quentin wouldn't complain about except that it means his little apartment is constantly full of people who he only kinda half-knows, quite clearly making veiled references to things he's only kind of half in-on.

 

It's all vigilante-related, of course. He's not an idiot. He knows that the odds are that the Arrow is amongst the people currently occupying his kitchen – he already had it narrowed down to John Diggle, Roy Harper or Oliver Queen some months ago, but he's not really gonna pursue that line of thought any further because he knows who his money's on and that's a rabbit hole he doesn't want to fall into until he absolutely has to.

 

“We make our own way, at different times,” Diggle is addressing the room with a tone that Quentin suspects is military in origin. “And Felicity will cover our electronic footsteps.”

 

“I can get everyone false names, false booking numbers – or just wipe us all out of the manifests,” Felicity holds up a tablet, and Quentin doesn't miss the faintly proud quirk of Oliver's mouth as she lets loose a stream of cyber-babble he's pretty sure no one else understands, mostly to the effect that she can make sure no one traces their travel plans. “Just give me the dates you can travel, I'll hook you up with the rest.”  
  


“Sara and I should depart alone,” Nyssa is sat at the head of the table making notes in an alphabet Quentin can't identify, “it's safest – the fewer people with us the less likely we are to draw attention, and neither of us want to endanger any of you.”

 

“And if you're attacked is Sara going to end up bleeding out again?” Quentin raises his eyebrows.

 

Sara rolls her eyes, “dad.”  
  


“I'm just saying – you were both able bodied last time, and it didn't help,” Quentin points a finger at her, “now you're wounded. Nyssa will have to defend you alone.”

 

Nyssa's eyes narrow at this slight against her viability as a bodyguard – but Oliver clears his throat.

 

“He has a point,” his voice is steady, quiet, and Quentin knows exactly that voice – dark nights, a dark hood – but ignores it. “You should take someone else with you. Roy. Maybe Sin.”  
  


“Not Sin,” Sara shakes her head, “she can go with you and Thea – I won't risk her, she's not ready.”

 

“So I'm chaperoning now?” Roy looks about as doubtful as Quentin feels – Roy Harper's a punk-ass kid, for god's sake. He's put a little muscle on since Quentin was regularly arresting him for mugging people, sure, but he's also struggling to grow some vaguely Oliver-like stubble to cover the acne breaking out on his neck – is the kid even old enough to drink?

 

Nyssa's expression also suggests deep scepticism. “I once beat that child to a bloody pulp and left him unconscious – my father's men won't be so merciful.”  
  


“I'm not a child,” Roy rolls his eyes. “And I hadn't had any training back then.”  
  


“That was less than a year ago.”  
  


“Well – ”

 

“Roy's good, Nyssa,” Sara interrupts, reaching over to squeeze his leg, “and who else are we going to take? Oliver's too recognisable. Digg's going to be travelling with a baby. Thea's even greener – ”

 

“Yeah, Thea's not happening,” Oliver gives his head a vigorous shake.

 

Greener at what? Quentin wonders, and then decides not to wonder.

 

“Fine, we'll take Roy,” Nyssa's tone still heavily implies what an insult the entire idea is to her dignity, “he can carry Sara's bags.”

 

***

Quentin travels alone – he was hoping to go with Laurel, but she goes a few days earlier, because apparently the League will be looking for obvious things like the Lance family heading to the same place at the same time. Like everyone else, Felicity hands him a bundle of falsified travel documents under at least four false names, which will bounce him invisibly across three random airports before he gets to Hawaii.

 

He swallows his professional distaste for how incredibly illegal this all is, reminds himself that his daughter, an assassin, is off to marry a woman who is some kind of mass murderer and also the daughter of potentially the most terrifying organised crime boss on the face of the planet, and decides that fake travel documents are the least of his problems right now.

 

He arrives in Hawaii 23 hours, three airports and very little sleep later, feeling kind of sweaty and rumpled but also decidedly not dead, so that's good.

 

And he spots John Diggle in the airport, with a baby and a woman who is probably the baby's mother – not married, his detective's eye suggests (no rings) – passing bags and baby between them with an efficiency that absolutely has to come from military training. They've travelled alone too.

 

“Is this all too top secret for us to share a cab?” He asks, rubbing his eyes as Diggle rocks the baby. “I am beat, jeez, couldn't Felicity have scheduled a decent lay-over somewhere?”

 

“She's booked us a house somewhere remote,” Diggle replies, “we're probably fine to head there together.”

 

“Cute kid.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Girl?”  
  


“Yeah.” The baby's in fairly neutral colours but there are butterlies on the front of her little corduroy dungarees. Diggle and Lyla have what Quentin recognises as the weary travelling parents' disregard for anything but essential items of baby clothing; booties, socks, hat and shirt are all gone – the kid is sucking on a pacifier and making sporadic, disgruntled baby sounds, clearly now too tired to fully melt-down but refusing to settle, eat or sleep. Diggle is rocking her on a kind of sleep-deprived autopilot as Lyla shoulders a diaper bag and complains loudly about the lack of caffeine in her system and how her daughter had better grow up supremely grateful for being breastfed because this is testing her _so hard_.

 

Quentin remembers exactly why he and Dinah gave up any kind of air travel until both their girls were school age.

 

***

The house is huge, remote, and backs onto a small, pristine lagoon which looks like something out of the illustrated story book Quentin remembers looking through when he was a kid – something about pirates and mermaids – might have been Peter Pan or Treasure Island. Either way, Christ, Felicity knows how to pick a location.

 

Roy is already sitting in the kitchen when they arrive, eating a bag of chips – and there are papers scattered about which Quentin recognises as stuff from Laurel's work, although there's no sign of either of his daughters in person.

 

“Laurel went for a run,” Roy tells him, “and Nyssa and Sara aren't up yet.”

 

It's only just midday – Quentin wouldn't mind taking a nap, but he wants to see both his kids first. Laurel's been there the longest, hence all her work stuff. And Nyssa, Sara and Roy apparently arrived three days ago; Roy has patches of sunburn already peeling on his nose and shoulders.

 

The house has at least eight bedrooms, a living room in the front, a kitchen in the back, three bathrooms... Quentin wonders around it, finds a small single room on the first floor, clean, quiet, broad views over the lagoon, decides this'll do nicely and deposits his bag, changes his clothes, finds the coffee maker. By the time Laurel comes clattering through the back door into the kitchen, he's on his second cup and feeling kinda human again – Laurel throws her arms around him, smelling of salt and sand and sweat and feeling real, warm, easy. He remembers holding her when she was a baby, the realness and warmness of her back then, and is suddenly embarrassingly emotional.

 

Probably the sleep deprivation.

 

“You get here okay?” He asks her, checking her, reflexively, for any signs of distress – but she's fine, perfect, whole.

 

“I'm good dad,” she squeezes him, gently, “I'm great.”

 

She looks it – happier, less exhausted than he's seen her in a while. She's probably needed the holiday. God knows, they all do. He plants a kiss on her temple and asks her where the hell her sister is. It's nearly lunch time.

 

“Her and Nyssa have kind of not come out of their room in two days,” Roy is on his second bag of chips, “don't think they got the memo that the honeymoon doesn't start till – you know – after they get married.”

 

“Yeah, that's more than I needed to know, thanks,” Quentin grabs a newspaper to swat at the kid.

 

Roy snorts, “at least you didn't have to travel with them.”

 

***

Felicity arrives the following morning, looking fresh and bright and holding Oliver Queen's hand, which Quentin raises his eyebrows at but doesn't comment on – Laurel doesn't seem bothered, Sara obviously isn't, so okay whatever. They're all grown ups.

 

Thea's with them, and a wirey, scruffy kid who Quentin vaguely recognises as Sin – she bounces all over Sara like they've known each other for way longer than, by all rights, they should have – he chooses not to comment on that, either. He suspects he's gonna be choosing not to comment on a lot of things over the next few days.

 

Case and point, he mostly still thinks of Thea Queen as being about twelve, even after her third DUI, but she actually genuinely looks like a grown up this time around – something subtle in the way she's carrying herself. Quentin was expecting that her mother's death would have changed her, but the stillness and poise isn't quite what he had in mind, and he's not sure he wants to know what she's been doing in the mean time. Still. He supposes it's better than the total breakdown that could have resulted from yet another trauma in the poor girl's life.

 

And that, it would seem, is everyone. They don't even need to get someone to officiate. In a move that Sara apparently finds hilarious, Oliver has got some kind of paper to say that he can marry them.

 

Much as it sounds distinctly hinky, Quentin also kinda suspects that Oliver's ordination is the most legal part of this wedding – so. No comment.

 

So the day after everyone's arrived, in the morning with the sun still low in the east and the sky bleeding pink and gold into the lagoon, the tide far out, the air still and quiet, Quentin puts on his blazer, follows his daughters and their friends down onto the beach, and watches Sara and Nyssa's second marriage ceremony.

 

She wears denim shorts and flip-flops and a black tank top with a yellow bird picked out in sequins over her chest. And a big floppy sunhat and three layers of sunscreen rubbing laboriously into her neck and shoulders by Laurel, because five years in the Tibetan mountains haven't changed the fact that she all but spontaneously combusts when in direct sunlight.

 

Nyssa wears red – a long, linen dress with a pattern like smoke dripping in black down the skirts – she scrapes her hair back off her face into a dramatic tangle of thick, ink-coloured curls tumbling down past her shoulder blades. Quentin watches as Sara ties it all up with a ribbon, tugs her little fingers through Nyssa's curls as Nyssa sits on the sand between her legs, skirts pooled around them both like blood. She leans back and looks up at Sara from under her eyelashes and looks truly young for the first time that Quentin can remember.

 

Laurel cries. Felicity cries. The baby cries and has to be tipped upside down and right way up a couple of times until she's too distracted to be upset anymore. Quentin manages to hold himself together through a few dignified, fatherly tears of his own – then, after, he has to busy himself making enough scrambled eggs to feed them all, and Felicity finds him crying into the pan, and quietly hands him a tissue.

 

***  
  
  


They have the house for another week. There's no obligation to stay – and actually, really, practically, it'll be safer if they don't.

 

But they do.

 

There's no TV or wifi – but there are board games, a radio, a shelf full of dusty paperback books and an actual hammock hung between two actual palm trees just beyond the back door. Quentin immediately decides to make himself the proprietor of said hammock, and everyone else is wise enough not to challenge his possession of it.

 

He gets up in the mornings, awake, automatically, at six thirty every day, pads out the back door to the hammock with a book, and reads until someone else (usually Laurel, though once, bless her, it's Felicity), gets up and brings him coffee. He can't remember the last time he read a book, properly – but he gets through three in the first three days. It's the best he's felt in a long time.

 

Today, though, it's Sara who appears, around 7AM with two mugs of coffee. She climbs into the hammock next to him – still in her pyjamas, sitting at the opposite end to him, crossing her legs, digging her bare feet into the lattice, cradling her mug as she watches him sip from his. She's able to move more naturally now, her wound not as painful, though she's still careful about the distances she walks, and the speeds. Quentin can see the edge of the fresh, ugly scar in the slight gap between her long, linen pyjama pants and tank top she's been sleeping in, and glances away – looks over her shoulder, instead, where he can see Oliver and Felicity walking the edge of the lagoon.

 

(Oliver kind of doesn't seem to sleep, at all. Quentin got up for a glass of water in the middle of the night to find the guy doing pull-ups from the back door mantel like that's something a human would willingly do at three in the morning, but he's surprised Felicity is awake and fully dressed – she doesn't seem like a morning kind of a girl.)

 

“They're up early,” he gestures, and Sara glances back, smiles – only a little wistfully, Quentin supposes.

 

“Felicity doesn't like letting him wonder off on his own. He broods. You know.”

 

Quentin does know – it's only taken a couple of days sharing space with the guy to see that his dark moods are like thunderclouds hanging about the place; Felicity seems to be about the only person capable of snapping him out of it at any speed. Mostly by poking him in the ribs until he smiles.

 

Sara's twisted round to watch them again. “They're cute.”  
  


“They're...?”

 

“I don't know,” Sara shrugs, “I don't think they know, either. It's – kind of a thing. They've been doing. For a while.”  
  


“Uh-hu.”  
  


Sara smiles, leans back in the hammock, draping one leg over the side of it. “Hey, I figure, if me and Nyssa can work ourselves out, those two will be fine. Way less complicated. Trust me.”

 

Quentin doesn't want to broach that. “This is good coffee,” he says, instead, reaching out to clink his mug to hers.

 

“Nyssa's stuff,” Sara replies, “it's Turkish. She never goes anywhere without a supply – she's kind of a snob about... coffee, whiskey – and caviare...”

 

“Your wife has expensive tastes.” It's the first time he's called Nyssa that – he sees it register with Sara at about the same moment that it registers with him, sees her small, relieved smile.

 

“Not for much longer – no way to finance that kind of lifestyle without her League of Assassins bank accounts. We've got a little bit, tucked away but – we're gonna need jobs soon, I guess.”

 

Quentin smiles, dryly. “Somehow I can't see Nyssa waitressing at the cheesecake factory.”

 

Sara snorts, “I don't know. She can be really personable when she's trying.”  
  


“Mm.”

 

Sara smiles again, into the coffee – quiet, peaceful. The early morning breeze ruffles the surface of the lagoon and lifts a strand of hair off her face – her freckles are more pronounced from exposure to the tropical sun, and she looks impossibly young, yet somehow invulnerable, immovable, which is weird given how recently he had to pump his own blood directly into her arm to keep her alive.

 

She's twisting that little gold band around her finger in a sort of meditative gesture, a steady, regular movement. “Diggle's going to talk to some contacts, find us work in – private security, or something. You know.”

 

“Or something,” he gives her a stern look, “I'd warn you to stay out of trouble, but...”

 

She meets his gaze, with about as close to a reassuring smile as she probably has in her repertoire. “We'll be fine, dad.”

 

“You make sure of that.”

 

“Sara?” Nyssa's voice from the house – Quentin glances round, sees Nyssa hanging out of the back door, “did you move my coffee beans?”

 

“They're on the side,” Sara calls back, “I made dad a mug. Didn't think you'd mind.”

 

Nyssa quirks her head for a moment, then smiles that curiously feline smile of hers. “Well, I suppose since he's family...”

 

She disappears back inside. Sara nudges Quentin's leg with her foot. “You're honoured.”

 

“Going for best father-in-law award,” he replies, sipping from his mug again, “guessing I'll win it by being the one who isn't trying to kill you both.”  
  


“Yeah, that helps.”

 

They both stay in the hammock for a while longer, until Oliver and Felicity walk back past them. They're both trying really hard to look like they haven't just slunk away from the house to find somewhere to make out, the effect of which is somewhat ruined by Oliver having Felicity's lipstick on his chin, his neck and his left earlobe. And then they hear the baby start crying somewhere inside, and Thea and Roy are bickering in the kitchen over whose washing up has been left in the sink and which of them should be making the other toast – and Quentin decides he should get up and make everyone breakfast like the only damn qualified grown up that he is.

 

When he comes back out to reclaim his hammock later, he finds Nyssa and Sara dosing in it together, Sara sprawled over Nyssa like a jungle cat on a branch, their legs entwined, blond hair and dark tangled together and falling through the hammock lattice. He decides not to disturb them.

 

 

 


End file.
